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There is also the melanurus, or black-tail; and concerning this fish Numenius says, in his Art of Fishing:—

The scorpion or melanurus black,
The guide and leader of the perch,

But Icesius says that he is very like the sargus, but that he is
inferior to the latter in the quantity and quality of his juice,
and also in delicacy of flavour; but that he is rather exciting
food, and very nutritious. And Epicharmus mentions him in
his Hebe's Marriage:—

There were sargini, there were melanuri.

Aristotle too, in his treatise on Animals, writes thus: "There
are some fish which have barred or spotted tails, among which
are the melanuri, and the sargi or sardine; and they have
many lines on their skin, dark lines. But Speusippus affirms,
in the second book of his treatise on Things similar to one
another, that the fish called psyrus resembles the melanurus;
but Numenius calls the psyrus, psorus, with an o, saying—

The psorus, or the salpe, or the dragon-fish
Which haunts the shore.

Athenaeus. The Deipnosophists. Or Banquet Of The Learned Of Athenaeus. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1854.

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